This article is more than 1 year old

Yahoo! hires Beavis and Butthead for porn clampdown

No cucumbers but some fave Reg words are fine

Yahoo's much-publicised new clampdown on porn has left Web users laughing due to its Beavis and Butthead approach to filtering.

The company has been under heavy pressure to remove and/or limit adult egroups on its servers. Last week it decided to remove adult videos from its e-commerce site and it says it has been working on hiding adult message boards as well as adding filters to cut out unsuitable content.

However a group of Reg readers gave the filtering system a quick test and were amazed at the results. In the same way that juvenile cartoon characters Beavis and Butthead snigger at dirty-sounding words, Yahoo has decided a blind-leading-the-blind approach is best.

Hence you won't find such devastating words like "cucumber" or even "documentation" making their way through the filters, because they include the word "cum". A little over the top, you'd think. But hang on. While cucumbers could theoretically be used in a sexual content, this over-nannying approach seems to have missed out on some genuinely dodgy words.

In what context do you think "ramrod", "rimming", "beastiality", "boner" and "blowjob" could be used if not sexual? But none of them will be picked up by Yahoo's filters.

We suggest a rethink. ®

More about

TIP US OFF

Send us news


Other stories you might like